Manolo

Reid

Why the hell is John Key agreeing to help Australia with its refugee problem when Australia will not give ground on NZers residency status over there.

Because Australians stop the boat-people before they get here. If they stopped doing that, we’d have several thousand at least arriving each and every year and remember, we have to support them all over the entire time they are here, which will be years. That’s why.

mavxp

“Investigate a possible reciprocal student debt recovery scheme”

This. How many NZers rack up big student loans and then head over to Aus? The loans are not the major loss either, because this is not even considering the large investment in primary, through tertiary education, health and welfare before they depart to benefit the Aussie taxpayer from having these people earning money for the Australian economy instead.

Being able to recoup the loans is the very least of what NZ should get back from Australia.

gazzmaniac

Being able to recoup the loans is the very least of what NZ should get back from Australia.

If New Zealand was such a great place to live then we’d all come home. It’s not, so we stay in Australia.
New Zealand needs to get its head out of its arse and think about why people leave and don’t come back.

Mark

I have no issue with NZ’rs not being eligible for welfare benefits so long as the regime is the same for both sides of the ditch. What irks me off is this piss weak Key government provides access for Australians living in NZ to schemes denied to NZ’s in Australia.

nasska

gazzmaniac

Many people who scornfully deride NZ, extend us a couple of digits & depart these shores for their El Dorado have enjoyed considerable largess from the taxpayers they leave behind. Health & education spring to mind…..the latter often through several years of tertiary education where the poor wee petals may have had to pay for a small proportion of the cost by taking out a student loan.

Regardless of their feelings about how their country of birth denies them the opportunity to rival Croesus tell us again why we shouldn’t be able to claw back the principal & interest on their loans.

Lance

@nassaka
It’s alright.
The ones who use the NZ tax payer to become educated and then leave for Aus telling us we are all fuckwits for staying here will be secure in the knowledge that if things turn to shit in Aus they can come back to NZ and access health and welfare here.
So the money they earn is taxed in Aus but the (expensive) safety net is in NZ.

Harriet

“….Many people who scornfully deride NZ,….have enjoyed considerable largess from the taxpayers they leave behind. Health & education spring to mind………Regardless of their feelings about how their country of birth denies them the opportunity to rival Croesus tell us again why we shouldn’t be able to claw back the principal & interest on their loans…”

Because their parents voted for the system and paid the taxes to run it Nasska It’s a bit like a private sector DPB.

As Kimble[or Kimbo] suggest…………’Clawing back the loans’ is subjective! 😎

nasska

Kimble & Harriet

The term “clawing back” could be subjective….”receiving due payment in full” may be less so for those who wish to dance on the head of a pin. Either way the loan was extended under an agreement which included the terms of repayment.

I have no wish to see people who no longer want to live here do so….we’re not North Korea & as a country we are probably better off without them.

They can slag us off to their hearts content & live where they may…..just so long as they pay us back the money they borrowed.

gazzmaniac

nasska – Having read your poorly worded excuse for a comment, I’ll attempt to answer what I think you’re harping on about.

Yes, people who grow up in New Zealand tend to receive a fair bit from the governmnet in the form of education and healthcare. The people who paid for that are their parents, who, early in their working lives, paid tax to fund other people’s kids’ education and healthcare and family benefit. After they decided to have kids, the family benefit was scrapped, they were expected to contribute to school fees and were encouraged to take private health insurance because of cuts to healthcare and education. In addition they were still required to pay high taxes to pay for the debt rung up to pay for the kids who came before theirs. And once their kids left home, the big governmnet debt was gone, so a family benefit was introduced in the form of Working for Families, which of course they’re expected to pay tax to fund!

I’m not arguing the fact that if people borrow money they should pay it back. Of course they should, and the loan should be subjected to interest. I do object to you spouting shit about kids getting all sorts of taxpayer support when they are growing up and just turning their back on New Zealand, when those taxpayers are their family who have had to pay and pay.

cha

“The bleating Jews who actually believe they are God’s people are still combing the world looking for war-crime culprits. […] Of course the “holocaust” happened but it was one of the many episodes of war and far from the worst in terms of human life. But Jews believe they are God’s people… so they are more important.”

“The vanity-driven, thieving Jews did not have a country so they stole someone else’s with the West’s (and the East’s) blessing… and we wonder why we are hated. Sure, the Jews are more industrious and inventive than the lazy Arabs. The Arabs have used receipts from the West’s addiction to oil to build crass monuments to themselves. An oil drunk Arab’s benchmark of success is to have a hundred more Rolls Royces than his cousin.”

nasska

gazzmaniac

Most people worth their salt accept that raising children is a costly exercise. There have been peaks & troughs in the level of Government assistance but for the past fifty years the state has paid a huge subsidy to parents on the assumption that healthy, well educated future generations would be an investment for New Zealand.

Your protestations that it’s the parents who have paid for everything could only hold up if those same people were net taxpayers while their children still relied on them…..there would not be many in that category.

Further, even if we ignore the state funding these children attracted, who will pay for the retirement benefits of the parents. Again the system presumed that future prosperous generations would effectively fund this from the taxes they would eventually pay. Not so if they’re paying taxes in Sydney or Los Angeles.

As I’ve stated above what will be will be & if anyone doesn’t want to contribute to their mother country so be it. It wouldn’t however, be unrealistic to ask them to discharge their legal liabilities such as student loans before they go.

gazzmaniac

Like I said in my previous post – I have no problem with people being required to pay back their debt. I don’t think that it should have to be before they leave however, since New Zealand’s pay is generally a lot lower than Australia’s so the loan would be paid back sooner if the borrower is earning Australian dollars.

mara

Young people, in the case of student loan repayments, have been trained to believe that there ARE free lunches. And now some of us are beating them around the head for learning their lessons well? The smarter among them are learning that Socialism is a failed experiment and the “bill” always arrives in the end. Usually in their letterbox, one way or another.

Steve (North Shore)

Let’s say I want to go live in Australia. I sell my house and shoot through without paying the Bank what I owe on my Mortgage.
The Bank ain’t gonna be happy about that, so the Govt should require all STUDENT LOANS to be paid before leaving, because those who default leave it up to the TAXPAYER to pay
End of story

gazzmaniac

Steve (NS) – you’ve chosen a pretty poor example there.
The bank will likely have no problem if you take off to Australia and keep your house, and if you don’t pay they will take it off you. Since by definition you can’t sell or give away an education, a better analogy would be not paying back a personal loan.
In that case, the interest (and penalties) keep accruing and will continue to do so until the bank catches up with you. Which is exactly what happens with the student loan scheme (since there is interest if you live overseas). The bank is also more choosy about who they give money to.

If the government is worried about people defaulting on their student loan, they should apply the same credit criteria to student borrowers as a bank would – not paying for rubbish arts degrees, checking credit history, cutting funding for not passing courses, etc.

gazzmaniac

By the way, I paid my loan back well after I moved to Australia. Because I had an obligation to pay back money I had borrowed for my education.
I think the government would be better off pursuing the no-hopers who live in New Zealand with useless degrees than the small minority of borrowers who leave and never pay their debt.

Reid ,
Australia did not have a boat people problem until they had Rudd and Gillard..the boat people problem is Australia’s self created problem..Why should NZ taxpayers enrich people smugglers? This involvement has NZers doing deals with big time criminals..Also as refugee advocates have said , these people are queue jumpers buying their way ahead of legitimate refugees..why should NZ support queue jumpers?
A Herald poll on this issue was about 90 per cent against..Key may want more of these people in the country..I don’t. I was assaulted twice by the mad max Somali who later went on to kidnap and stab others..The safety of NZers should come first.